The Great Work | Thomas Berry

Why it is included: Thomas Berry was a "geologian"—a monk who studied the earth. He reframes our current crisis not as a political or economic problem, but as a crisis of cosmology.

We don't know who we are or what we are doing here. Berry argues that we are currently a "disrupting force" on the planet, and our "Great Work" is to transition into a "benign presence."

It moves the conversation beyond "saving the environment" (which implies we are separate from it) to "participating in the dream of the Earth."

Berry gives us a new story of the universe where humans are not the rulers of the planet, but the universe is becoming conscious of itself. It provides the deep, soulful "Why" that is strong enough to sustain us through the difficult "How" of the transition.